Courtesy of ESPN
The Predators looked a bit sloppy in scattered parts throughout the night, but had plenty of offense as they beat the Ducks 5-4 to give them their 5th straight win and put them 5 points back of division leader Detroit
Special Teams:
Powerplay – 0 for 3, 0%
Powerplay For The Season – 37 for 244, 15.2%
Penalty Kill – 4 for 6, 67%
Penalty Kill For The Season – 40 for 257, 84.4%
Best Play of the Game: Jordin Tootoo’s 4th goal of the game. As Toots was agitating a Ducks player, who tried to lure him into a fight, Tootoo literally brushes the guy off, gets in the middle of the play, and finalizes it with the goal. Beautiful SMART hockey by #22.
Worst Play of the Game: Shane O’Brien’s penalty with 5 minutes left in the game. This penalty was completely unnecessary and was an undisciplined play. The non-sense needs to stop.
Players (Good and Bad) of the Game:
The Good: Teemu Selanne – The man is unreal and you can clearly see why he is nicknamed The Finnish Flash. #8 scored twice on the 5-on-3 tonight and was pretty much uncontested on both of them
The Bad: Lucas Sbisa – One name you didn’t hear much from tonight…except that he was on the ice for FOUR of Nashville’s 5 goals. YEESH! Ends the night with 0 points and a -4 rating
My Preds #1 Star: Sergei Kostitsyn – Shame he couldn’t get the hat trick, but 2 goals IS 2 goals. Great game by Sergei
Synopsis: I was SO angry walking out of the Bridgestone Arena tonight, but it had nothing to do but with the last 10:21 of the third period. When you give up 3 goals (2 due to stupid stupid penalties) and you start to look like you are going to let the team who is ONE point behind you in the standings back in the game, you know there is something wrong.
Now, not to take anything away from the win, tonight was two HUGE points for the Nashville Predators, as this puts them in 5th place and only 5 back of Detroit with 7 games remaining and one left in the season series with Detroit.
That’s right, folks, the division is STILL in reach! And I’m not giving that dream up JUST yet
Back to the story at hand, though. Yes the Predators got the 2 points in the end, but if they pull that stunt Saturday…or even TUESDAY for that matter, they’re going to be sorry they did. They need to buckle down and keep trucking over opponents and do the same in the playoffs
Next game is Saturday March 26th against the Dallas Stars in yet ANOTHER huge game for the Predators. Few tickets are still available for this one, it’s a 7pm puck drop
Playoff Outlook: 90 points, Currently, 5th place – 3 point out of 4th, 5 points out of 2nd
Best of 19 Record: 8-2-2
March Record: 8-2-2
What SportsClubStats Says?: 99 points gets the Predators a guaranteed playoff spot. We’re 9 points out with 7 games remaining. Things are getting a bit more clearer
Thanks for reading!
~KM
The call on Ward after the Legwand goal was bogus. He was shoved into Ellis. That never should have been a 5 on 3.
I didn’t think the Preds had so much a bad game as Suter did. He single-handedly brought the Ducks back into it. I though the Preds played well, and I’m not going to get on Legwand for trying to feed Kostitsyn the puck for a hatty attempt at the end of the game with a two goal lead. If not for Suter that game probably ends 5-1.
The call on Ward was roughing. How can you rough someone that’s behind you?
Actually, it doesn’t look like the Duck defender ever touched him. Ward simply trucked Ellis. The refs had to call something as the puck DID go in before this happened, so as the play was dead it was called roughing.
*whew*
Yep, and there we have it